Mybe I jut play phantoms a lot, but I've had a phantom in my lists for the last several months and run into no major issues. I always am maximising firepower with FCS and gunner, whether it be echo or whisper, and as long as I play right tactically relative to my other two ships, the phantom is usually the last to die or takes a huge chunk of the opponent's list with it.

The only list I'd have strong issues against is quad TLT, but usually the rest of my ships can get that down to 2 or 3 TLT before I'm comfortable engaging with the phantom.

What are you pairing with your phantom? I'm very curious, trying hard to justify to myself taking either whisper, Soontir, Vader or any of the older crew to Hoth... But then I look at Scum and Defenders and nevermind

3 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

What are you pairing with your phantom? I'm very curious, trying hard to justify to myself taking either whisper, Soontir, Vader or any of the older crew to Hoth... But then I look at Scum and Defenders and nevermind

So here's what I found out today and what I did. It's Kylo Ren. I think everyone kind of just assumed that Blinded Pilot was "the" card for Kylos ability. And don't get me wrong BP is great but in a conversation we were talking about what comes after BP and I reviewed the Piot damage cards and found the Damaged Cockpit card. So after putting 2+2 together I flew this:

RAC-

Predator

Palp

Kylo

Echo-

Kallus

Lone Wolf

FCS

ACD

So the issue with using any non-VI Whiper Phantom is getting shots off to get that ACD to kick in. Well with RAC (and you could put VI on him) and Palp you can use Kylo to ISYTDS then crit with RAC or force with Palp. Instead of using BP crit you use Damaged Cockpit. Voila PS0 for the rest of the game. That can quickly put Echo (even non-VI Echo) back as the highest PS ship in the game. Target any 6+ PS ships using Damaged Cockpit and watch the beautiful flying machine that is Echo. Of course this has hard counters in Determination or Chewy crew (once) or VI Chewy but using those Damaged Cockpits early vs high PS with RAC and Palp makes Echo top dog PS.

1 hour ago, Lobokai said:

What are you pairing with your phantom? I'm very curious, trying hard to justify to myself taking either whisper, Soontir, Vader or any of the older crew to Hoth... But then I look at Scum and Defenders and nevermind

I've so far not lost a game, including two Parattani games (and a mindlink palob fenn manaroo game) with this list:

Whisper: FCS, Gunner, VI, ACD
Rhymer: Shuttle, Snap shot, Tactician
OL: Juke, Comm Relay

whisper is the first target, so you bait and then run, putting rhymer into snapshot range, crunch out a bonkload of stress on your favourite fenn rau before they close to range 1, fenn has tops a focus and a TL from manaroo. Long range guns from whisper chews into fenn usually to the effect of 1 or two hull, rhymer and OL finish him off or leave him sufficiently crippled that whisper can safely engage again from range.

That's the principle. but running ships through the whisper blender in inopportune spots from rhymer's shots just turns things to mulch. as long as you don't whiff your approach with whisper, she's surprisingly safe until the end game. You have to rely on the gunner and FCS really, but as long as you make them go through rhymer to get to whisper, they're gonna have a bad day.

Lists which target rhymer first also fare poorly as it tends to be telegraphed well, so you can play whisper a bit more aggressive and still try to go for a turn 1 vaporisation. OL is criminally ignored, often to the tune of 2 hits a turn.

It's not foolproof, it's not as consistent as Parattanni, you'll have bad matchups and you'll lose some games to luck. But you sure as heck have a very good window for winning.

I've been using Kylo on a Phantom for a few weeks... its really good vs PS9+, although I pair with Vader (and someone else) rather than RAC.

Damaged cockpit is the reason to take Kylo in a phantom list... Blinded pilot is an occasional extra.

My third ship is usually a Sinear pilot with Prockets... when enemy is PS0 he becomes as good as an ace :-).